It must have crossed other minds than mine to wonder whether these Apprentices and those before them are actually from another planet.
Apart from the frequently incomprehensible behaviour, there is their curiously eccentric use of their personal communication devices. I don’t say mobile phones because I have never seen anyone outside this programme hold and use a mobile phone the way they all do.
One often wonders, fervently, whether at any moment the guys and gals are going to be beamed back to the Star Fleet Flagship ‘Entrepreneur’, good old fashioned enterprise having been consigned to the knackers’ yard long ago. These can’t be the mobile smart-phones they appear to be, because these paradigm talents of the internet generation, the golden stars of the business firmament, never find anything out about anything on the net. Even what a ‘cloche’ is. I doubt they can even spell ‘dictionary’.
Sugar Daddy’s treasure hunt is always a triumph of pointlessness over rationality every year. One remembers classics of the genre: like the ‘Kosher’ chicken bought from a Halal butchers by an earlier visitor from Planet Stupid whose name I can’t remember but whose ethnic/religious status as “half-Jewish” will never be forgotten.
Bewilderingly and perversely in the digital age, locked into the customer-hostile London Yellow Pages (Product placement perhaps?), 2 teams of 7 of the brightest young people in the land could not source 10 items each in a day. Team Logic who disavowed their Team name throughout this task with stunning, literally wilful determination, managed only 6: e.g. a 30 mile cross-London drive apparently being the only way to get ice in one of the great cities in the world. I have been in the odd bar where the barman appeared to have followed the same strategy but as Sugar Daddy himself would delphically intone – “strewth, where is (sic) your brains?”
Efforts to ‘negotiate’, apart from ‘Jungle’ Jim Eastwood and Vincey – for whom the word ‘vainglorious’ must have been invented, were farcical. I watch much of The Apprentice from behind the sofa and the carpet back there is getting worn away after last night. Trying to knock down a Savile Row Royal Warrant Hatters from £360 to “offer a fiver” was deeply, painfully embarrassing to watch until the slow-burning schadedenfreude endomorphins kicked in. At least the guys in the shop proved that even those who spend their days sucking up to the rich have a sense of humour in discounting the topper by a piss-taking 1p. The Apprentices should have airily left the shop telling them to “keep the change”. When the assistant said he’d have to “consult his colleague” about a discount you can just hear the conversation: “’ere Bert..you’ve just got to come and have a laugh...” I’m sure that I saw one of these purveyors of silly hats to Royalty – Tonga no less – actually wince when one of our intrepid entreprenoors paid with real spondulicks - cash.
Acquiring 500 triple-ply bog rolls wasn’t as funny as it should have been: Team Logic failed altogether and ended up in the..... Even, “I move among the upper crusts nowadays” Sugar Daddy was gobsmacked at £900 big ones for tea. It was of course “rare” tea: in the sense of very rarely bought I guess.
On a serious note: when Gavin Winstanley (at least the Khyber Pass doesn’t have to be neglected any longer) appeared on the follow-up ‘You’re Fired’ where he was very funny and displayed a keen native Liverpudlian wit. Not a vestige of these qualities had we seen from him in the preceeding 3 weeks. Despite running his own successful business, getting the circus of egomania that is an Apprentice Team in action, to do anything, let alone anything purposeful, was beyond him. Creating an environment within which intelligent people behave with breathtaking stupidity is pretty much the leitmotif of the Apprentice and it can be directly and exclusively tracked back to the Good Lord! Sugar.
You can frighten people into action: you can’t frighten them into thought. The peer pressure carefully nourished by the producers of this show allied to Sugar Daddy’s instincts to bully, demand deference and intimidate any and everyone as the mood takes him, combine to drive every shred of thought and intelligence from the candidates and therefore the show. The only response open to these hapless ratings-fodder, is to withstand: challenge, disagree or argue and the arch-proponent of the FIFO (Fit In Or F**k Off) style of management, will just sack you.
The Good Lord!’s distaste for intelligence, hatred of intellect and deep insecurity at dissent doesn’t only apply to the Apprentices: as is evidenced by the few mumbled ‘safe’ observations by the Ms Brady and the tragic fate of Nippy Nick Hewer: apparently struck dumb for the last 2 weeks. ‘Fit-Inners’ both. Butter, bread and worldly savvy come to mind here.
For all our shameless and slightly shameful fun at The Apprentice – the Good Lord! Sugar creates an ethos and atmosphere that is toxic to the trust and well-founded self-confidence crucial to effective teamwork. With his inimitable bullying style and distaste for intelligence in which he appears to pride himself; the resulting climate of anxiety and nervousness makes all but the arrogant egomaniacs do really stupid, out of character things.
I suppose there is a kind of power in that: but it has nothing to do with excellence and very little to do with successful management and business practice. It is also nothing very much to be proud of.
Here, here.
Another great review. The fact is that these 'tasks' bear absolutely no relation to any experience apprentices in the workplace may have. Hopefully, anyway. The hapless Project Managers are not there to inspire and lead an enthusiastic team. Rather, they are sheepdogs attempting to round up a bunch of errant wolves-in-sheeps' clothing, who are ready to turn upon each other at any moment, and who will undermine the efforts of the PM at any oppoortunity. Such was Gavin's experience last night.
But I have a sneaking affection for Our Vincent. Except when he's manicuring his hair.
Susiex
<Added>Erm, hear, hear, that is...
It'd feel like million quid to tell him where to shove his job and I'd do for free. Mind you, I've never worked in an office,
can't think why, but there you go. Would be nice to get in an office when it snows but I'd still rather work in the snow than put up with someone like him . Cod liver oil works wonders for the joints and you don't notice the cold after you've warmed up.
Can't watch the telly anymore , council won't let me cut the branches off the trees that are blocking the signal and I'm not buying a bigger TV ariel because it'll put to much strain on the the chimney stack in high winds and I don't see why I should buy one anyway.
I'm with you Andrew.
I just can't understand why an Apprentice, and a woman would be ideal, doesn't just say after one of Sugar's insulting remarks: "please don't talk to me like that: being the boss doesn't give you the right to be discourteous - quite the reverse in fact."
Keep taking the cod liver oil..
regards
Zettel
I'm always baffled by the non use of the internet too. I think they must be banned from doing it because it doesn't have the same televisual impact as them making phonecalls. It must be something like that. I think it's very interesting what you've said here about the bullying persona of Sugar. But it does make good telly
Should set him up . Roomful of candidates who are actors and primed to wind him up and give him the wrong response and keep reinforcing the point that he's being rude.
There is another side to this you might want to consider. If you are in the services or doing a dangerous civilian job, politeness 'gets in the way' in some situations. Perhaps it is the same with him, when he's risking cash. It's his life or death type experience, acted out from a comfy office chair. Think about what he's got to loose if people do screw up around him and all those he's crossed and been rude to in order to maintain his position and lifestyle. These are high stakes to someone who is accustomed to these things.
Regarding the "set up". I wonder if the BBC guys are showing something at a subtle level here, not just concerning the candidates but allowing the audience an inside view into the kind of mind and personality type who have power and control. Louis Theroux without Louis Theroux?
Maybe over a period of time, just as meeting your heroes demythologises them, Mr.Sugar becomes increasingly 'human' and the real life situations he creates for others in his sphere of influence ,evidently questionable by individuals who who never have been able to formulate the question without watching programs like this. The Media is a complex mirror, I think.